Blazing Chrome (PS4)

Some video games wear their influences on their sleeves, but Blazing Chrome does so to such a degree it could almost pass for a new entry in the Contra series. A pretty faithful reproduction of the run-and-gun platforming action of its inspiration, it even visually evokes Contra with its aesthetic decisions and enemy design. It does sprinkle a few ideas of its own over the experience, but it certainly feels like it wouldn’t mind the comparisons, the developers likely hoping to invoke the style of play since Konami largely put aside making new Contra games.

 

At some point in the 22nd century, robots have nearly wiped out humanity, Mavra leading a small force of the survivors to try and take out key points in the operations of the mechanical menace. Utilizing a reprogrammed robot named Doyle initially, players can unlock two new characters to play through the game as well and a few human allies will crop up during the journey to help out, but mostly this will be a matter of a one-woman-or-machine army taking on the enemy forces on their own. Cooperative play can make it two heroes working together instead, players initially presented with four missions they can tackle in whatever order they please, each one targeting an important enemy location or resource. After those four stages are cleared, the final two levels are played in succession, the adventure generally short but lengthened through a pretty high difficulty level.

In Blazing Chrome, a single hit will kill your character, and while they will enter a level with a handful of lives to start, these carry over between stages and there aren’t too many opportunities to grab extra ones. Playing carefully ends up being important, but many of your enemies are quick or like to come right at you, meaning you need to remain canny while being ready to open fire and dodge at any moment. Your default weapon is thankfully an effective machine gun that can take out many of the common enemies fairly quickly, and since the game likes to keep you moving by having basic baddies run in from the screen edges so the action never truly lets up, it’s important to always be ready to use it. In this side-scroller you can only aim downward while jumping or hanging from a rail though, and while you can diagonally aim up or down, you’ll also start moving as you do so and it’s often important to press right or left before pressing down to avoid going prone by mistake. While on the ground you can at least use a dodge roll that gives you a way to avoid some bosses and other dangers, but most of the time you are usually given some space or time to adjust your aim if a foe isn’t just right in front of or behind you.

 

You’ll always have your machine gun on hand, but you can find weapon pick-ups and support bots that help you fight foes in different ways or better your chances for survival. The Energy Whip is perhaps the most unique, a purplish whip extending from your weapon’s muzzle and hanging a certain distance out in the air. By moving it around you can deal heavy damage to enemies who are close by, making it quite rewarding to whip out provided you’re willing to get in close to the opposition. Already your character can perform a melee strike if you’re right next to a robot, its damage high but the whip is far more flexible as it deals sustained damage and can be angled in different ways. The Grenade Launcher does about what you’d expect of it, launching a powerful explosive but also giving you the option to detonate the grenade in the air if you’re worried the shot might fall short. Lastly, the Particle Beam is a laser you can charge up for a very strong lasting beam, although uncharged shots are fairly meager. You’ll lose your current equipped weapon should you die, but as long as you don’t get a game over, any other weapons you have will still be available, meaning you can carefully swap in stored weapons for foes you know they’re good against or when you’re ready to take a risk. Support bots aren’t as generous but provide some useful aid, these coming in three varieties as well. The Speed-Bot gives you a double jump and quicker movement, Attack-Bot will float beside you and back you up with some extra automatic fire, and Defense Bot will give you a shield that can sustain two hits before disappearing. All of these can mitigate the difficulty to some degree and trying to hold onto them still ensures you’re playing carefully, but there’s another accommodating factor in place that lets the game push hard against you without making it feel insurmountable.

 

The stages in Blazing Chrome are often split into three segments, and while dying will bring you back immediately where you left off, a full on game-over will set you back to the start of the current level segment. Many of these are well-paced to where you feel like you can conceivably push forward to reach the next segment and earn your checkpoint while also still being a suitable challenge you won’t just breeze through. Enemies can come from all sorts of angles and attack with unique methods you’ll have to learn. Giant robotic insects drop bombs or other enemies and eliminating them quickly before they choose when to lose their payload feels crucial. Robotic ninjas can leap about nimbly and throw energy kunai that covers an arc of space before them. Gunmen will be positioned in spots where it’s tricky for you to target them but they have a good vantage point, and some sturdy foes can launch homing shots or cover a lot of screen real estate if you don’t prioritize wiping them out quickly. Each of the game’s six stages will have unique foes to learn too, so the sandy start of the Weapons Facility for example has worms burst out of the ground you need to account for as you press forward.

The level variety definitely makes it worth it to keep pushing forward, the player exploring a destroyed city, a snowy tundra, and walking across a supply train as they blast apart bots. Quick reactive movement is often key, but many stages feature some section that moves away from the standard run and gun play at least a touch. Sometimes you’ll find yourself riding on a hoverbike, leaping over barriers and pits as you need to deal with high speed robots that are a bit tougher to aim at when you have to manage you movement to avoid a crash. Some stages instead have you pop into a walking mech, each of these utilizing a different weapon type. While a few might as well be evolutions of what you usually utilize, they all are more durable and powerful, the drill mech even bringing a different approach to melee fighting as you just hold out its drills and try to run into enemies before they can slip away. The game even tosses in a flying section at one point, but Blazing Chrome can find some entertaining ideas just by throwing sufficiently creative bosses in your path without shifting away from the fundamentals as well.

 

Blazing Chrome’s stages often contain multiple boss fights or even regular enemies that seem to take enough hits to count as at least a mini-boss. A good few have multiple phases, and while most have a sequence of attacks you can learn and overcome, evens ones that don’t transform might still speed up or add new tricks as the fight goes on. One fight takes place in a cramped hallway with a spider-like machine coming towards you, the player needing to learn the safe spots as it begins to open fire. Another fight has the entire room you’re in be the boss itself, the player watching for which part of the fleshy walls will attack next. They certainly feel like effective tests of smart movement and the checkpoint system can make it easier to learn them even if pushing back through some dangerous part of the stage might make it a little frustrating if you fall. The final boss is almost a full stage segment on their own with how much you need to do to fully take them down, but overcoming the challenge remains satisfying because you can learn and react better on your next attempt.

 

Besides different difficulties that can strip out or add a few more allowances, Blazing Chrome is mostly just the six mission adventure and a Boss Rush mode. Mirror Mode flips the stage orientation but it’s more of a novelty, but you also unlock two characters for beating the game once, the two packing strong short range strikes and charged blasts for the foes you have to fight from far away. They can be both harder and easier to play the game with depending on what specifically you’re up against, but one advantage of Blazing Chrome’s short length is you can satisfy your curiosity about their different fighting styles that do not even utilize weapon pick-ups. It would be nice to have more levels, but since each one feels distinct and packs in a good deal of unique battle situations, it still feels like the time you spend with Blazing Chrome is still rich in content.

THE VERDICT: Blazing Chrome aims to give players the same thrills as its run-and-gun ancestors and definitely succeeds. Its difficult but satisfying spread of stages bring new gameplay types, tough bosses, and consistent action that tests your abilities while also giving you some room to mess up and learn thanks to things like the support bots and mid-level checkpoints. It can be a bit short depending on your skill level and some movement elements are fiddly like aiming downwards diagonally, but the creative bosses and unexpected dangers fill levels to the brim with entertaining obstacles to overcome where you can feel your improvement as a player with each new attempt.

 

And so, I give Blazing Chrome for the PlayStation 4…

A GOOD rating. While any game where one hit can kill you can lead to inevitable flashes of frustration as something whips out a new attack you didn’t anticipate, Blazing Chrome has the right support elements in place to help you bounce back without removing the need to learn how an enemy works to effectively overcome them. A little touchiness in how aiming low works won’t effect too many moments, so mostly Blazing Chrome’s efficacy comes from the exact balance its various baddies and bosses achieve, especially when some change to the gameplay like the bike-riding or mech-piloting gets involved. Mech segments aren’t often difficult unless you’re aiming to get them all the way to beating the level boss for a special trophy, but there are times where having something like the grenade launcher obliterate a boss without much trouble feel well-earned because you had to utilize that weapon wisely and that massive foe likely still required some reactive play from you before it went down. One reason more content could have truly made this game superb is there would perhaps be less specific weighing of individual segments: the bike segments are a fun break from run and gun action, but some stretches of the snow level feel a bit plain and they make up 1/3 of a major stage. You’ll still mostly get blood-pumping action where you can’t stop and rest since enemies don’t ever fully let up, but the enemy balance remains sharp so that it’s not overwhelming unless you specifically dive into something like Hardcore mode looking for a ridiculous challenge.

 

Blazing Chrome definitely delivers on a tough and diverse experience despite hewing so close to Contra you could probably trick people into thinking it was part of the series. The Contra series is beloved for a reason though, and Blazing Chrome understands the thrill of tough stages and impressive bosses and taps into that vein quite well. Perhaps just as important to its success, Blazing Chrome adjusts things a bit for modern players who aren’t interested in replaying entire games if they make a few too many mistakes. It may be hard to view it independently of its inspiration, but its successes certainly show a strong understanding of what makes a challenging run-and-gun work and it still deserves commendation for implementing that so well.